Marathon

I have a couple of places I go in Marathon to accomplish tasks otherwise not easily done in Key West. My home on Cudjoe Key is split halfway between the two cities but because I work in Key West  I obviously don't see Marathon nearly as much. Which is ironic to a certain degree as the drive to Marathon is easier and swifter and much more scenic when you find yourself commuting over the Seven Mile Bridge as my wife used to prior to the pandemic.

Marathon is home to light industry similar to Stock Island the place that relieves Key West of the need to dirty it's hands with physical labor. 

I come to Marathon for stuff likes tires for my cars, oil changes, sometimes I come to walk Rusty and will shop at Publix where the crowds seem less.  Stuff like that. I like living halfway between Key West and Marathon. It used to helpful that the 24h hour (extremely expensive) vet hospital was here but now that's moved the Big Coppitt at Mile Marker 10.

That was the Golden Van getting a $65 oil change.

Rusty and I were walking waiting for the tires to be rotated as the van has reached 15,000 miles. We came across a dog sitting on a motorcycle all by itself. Like all little guys (me included) he strutted up so I let Rusty loose and they circled around for a while until they got bored with each other.

I found a trompe l'oeil mural too which i rather liked. A weird place for such elaborate artwork.

Tenacious. Not a bad attribute.

Trucks and big wheeled toys for big strapping me (like me).

I love how Marathon looks completely unlike Key West.

But here too big houses tower over the trees:

Rusty the explorer on Aviation Boulevard behind the airport. They have a luxurious airport with a fine terminal just waiting for an airline to serve the city. 

The van unobtrusive - behind Publix in a regular sized parking spot:

Back to the waterfront, my favorite picnic site at Old Bahia Honda.

Sunny Duval

I had better say this now and allow the chips to fall where they may: I am not looking forward to summer. I was on Duval Street at four o'clock the other day and, aside from the fact that vaccinated me had his mask on, it was hot enough to boil an egg on my head. I ran back to the office and stood in front of the a/c for a few minutes before resuming the arduous task of unraveling parking violations and noise complaints and relationships gone bad.81 degrees this time of year feels like 95 in September. 

I parked the car on Southard, abandoning satellite radio and air conditioning for the hot streets of Key West and decided to invigorate my work day with a  brief hike with my small camera (Lumix LX100ii) to see what marvels and unconsidered trifles may present themselves to my jaundiced eye. I saw some shadows and light but I also saw a ton of people. Duval was looking like the good old days. 

They are now telling us the end of the pandemic is in sight and even though there may be more cases in the winter when Northerners crowd together indoors we will end up living in a country where the vulnerable will be vaccinated and the anti vaxxers can take their chances. 

Right now Key West is in vacation mode. Officers are posted to get people to wear masks and of course people comply. But when the badge is a distant memory holidaymakers are less enthusiastic about covering up.

Stores require masks, along with shirts and shoes but outside its a cat and mouse game of warning-mask- walk away- take it down. I was walking and photographing

I am so used to wearing a  mask, as a sheep in government service you might say, it doesn't bother me unless my glasses fog up when I'm aiming the camera. Not everyone on Duval Street is on vacation:

A new-to-me eatery in a spot that has undergone a few transitions over the years. They have an $11 banh-mi sandwich that I might be interested in trying and they have outdoor seating too. I used to live near San Jose in California where a huge number of refugees lived after the Vietnam War, and they had some astonishing places to eat in the 1980s when Vietnamese food was largely unknown. I had my first banh-mi there and even now  that it is become a fad I still like that mix of French and Far East.

Duval Street is a tired old whore in some respects when you look at the sleazy t-shirts and tired cheap "souvenirs" and yet the architecture, the bones of this old street remains the same, the underlying beauty of the buildings and the facades is very much there if you look up. And on a hot sunny afternoon as the sun heads for the horizon I see delicious shadows and the promise of a cooler evening. The light can be quite lovely.

The cruising up and down on Duval is endless, with a stream of bicycles and scooters and I find myself surprised there aren't more accidents. Which is to say there are quite enough thank you but I feel all too often Duval is confused with Disney, and traffic here is not make believe like it is in Disney where people don't crash in the happiest place in the world. 

I don't know if the two wheeled vacationers, persons who would not be seen dead at home on work horse bicycles or scooters, take the time to look around as they ride, to ponder the history and the people who lived here all the way back to 1828. I do and it fills me with wonder. Duval Street is a story of survival.

They speed by on wheels of all sizes, not all shapes as even in this town all wheels tend to be round and obey the laws of physics.

Just off Duval I passed one of the denizens of Old Key West, and I've seen her shuffling around downtown, neat and tidy, in her own world, minding her own business, no trouble to anyone. It makes me glad she can still hang in among the new arrivals, the busy, the efficient, the wealthy. All is not lost.

Nomadland

The movie recently released on Hulu (and in those theaters that are still open) has caused a few ripples among people who live in vehicles.  Its a story of the usual reaction among people who think they know more about a subject than the people who made the film. Most of us aren't secret agents or jewel thieves so it's easier to watch an adventure film for pure entertainment than to watch a film about something you think you know.  This film is about a woman living in a van, on her term she is houseless, not homeless. Van life has hardly anything to do with this form of being a nomad. It's not going to change my life.

The story is simple enough. A woman, Fern, becomes widowed before the film begins and we see her packing up her life in a small town in Nevada after losing her job and she drives away from her storage locker to live life in her low top older white van. Its not a comfort machine but she has a toilet (vividly portrayed in use as Frances McDormand doesn't hold back) cooking facilities and a bed. The whole tone of the movie is slow paced, meditative and unhurried. Its dark outside, snowy and cold much of the time. Fern goes hither and yon, finds temporary work, makes friends and lives a low key van life. She is supposed to be standing in for older workers, many women, who have made little money earn less on social security and find a mobile life better than being on the streets. Fern has opportunities to live in a house, to return to her family, to find love with David Strathairn and she makes her choice. Van Life? Retirement? Solitude?  

For me life in the United States has been a stroke of luck, or genius on the part of my youthful self. However I have skated by with decent jobs when I wanted them, no family obligations, no expensive divorces no child support. In many respects I have lived a charmed life, assisted in no small measure by a  forward looking wife and a pension plan. For many Americans old age is no golden retirement, no happy fade to black but a struggle to maintain sanity and mental health, to maintain relationships and find a way to live with not much money. That's not van life. Swankie has cancer and a limited time to live. Saying good bye to Fern is a tough moment in the movie. (In real life she is hale and hearty and doing fine in her van). It's not van life. Its people in vans living on the edge of dissolution.

What strikes me as a bit odd is how the generalizations sweep everybody who is affected by the movie. When I decided to have a mobile retirement I found myself deluged by  Instagram pictures of youngsters living their "best life" as the cliché has it in immaculate vans and the skimpiest of bikinis as though that was my goal. I'm really not delusional. My own path is somewhere I hope between the  forced van dwellers at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (below) in Quartzite and the mad YouTubers making money off the self delusion of dreamers paying others to live their fantasies.

I am very fond of Bob Wells (pictured below in an unflattering portrait) an Alaskan who was forced into a van in great misery by an unhappy divorce and who quietly and efficiently adapted to life in a  van, hunkering in the desert and learning how to make do with a social security check by his account of $1100 a month. He has a stale website where I found him but he has moved to YouTube where he makes some $75,000 a year, by others accounting and attracts the usual band of desperate trolls and character assassins. He has loosely organized a charity designed to help equip people with simple rolling homes to get them out of homelessness and into vehicles, he has advice and encouragement for the lost souls forced into vehicle living as well as the luckier people who choose to do as he does. He makes a cameo appearance in the film and reveals his own pain and it is perhaps that couple of minutes that has galvanized van dwellers to do so much navel gazing around this movie.

My own thoughts about Nomadland center on the work of former Key West resident Barbara Ehrenreich who documented in old fashioned books the plight of the working poor in so many different guises.  To me, from my middle class unencumbered perch Nomadland speaks much more to that reality than the reality of life in a  van.

Birds, Mangroves, Deer

Snowbirds aren't just human in the Keys. Winter migration sees a ton more birds in the skies and among the leaves and roots of the salt flats.

I am not a bird photographer which is one massive specialization. I think of myself as a documentary photographer which is a catch all category useful for someone who writes a diary and illustrates it with pictures. The idea of spending ten grand to buy the equipment to photograph birds in flight and hovering honey bees seems slightly insane to me, who has no plans to make a career of this. A retirement plan that involves living in a 70 square foot van doesn't leave much room for photo printing. I am small picture digital nomad. 

I love the mangroves, pools of water, reflections, colors and silence. I do miss mountains and trees and valleys and stuff but I cannot hide the fact that the road life will present some challenges. It is said, with plenty of justification that staying in place makes it easier to go in depth, to learn a place, to know how to photograph what you want. I am going to be challenged by the road and I hope I can rise to the challenge.

Meanwhile these are pictures of places I know and places I like and I'd like you to like too.

 

Duval Street Normal

I took the van into town and even though it is high season in winter there was plenty of parking downtown. I was surprised to find a space easily one block from Duval. I had had chores to do followed by an evening shift at work so I figured I'd do better to take the van to town and spend the afternoon in relative comfort without trekking home to Cudjoe Key. It was a good plan.

I spent some time at Truman Waterfront on an uncharacteristically sunny day off but before I went to work for my four hour evening shift I decided to take a photo walk on Lower Duval to see how the pandemic winter is working out. Duval Street isn't really very appealing as a destination and in this Covid year it has been even less so, which I do find rather annoying.

Properly masked I set off. I am fully vaccinated at this point, a week after my second shot so the mask is more  away to reduce the spread than to protect myself  but having lived through all those months of mask controversy I think it is more important than ever to keep following the rules. And in Key West the rule is wear a mask. These chickens were ignoring the rules and thus setting a terrible example to their numerous offspring:

It was a pleasant afternoon to wander and perhaps to wonder, a warm day and as it turned out not too crowded. I have to say that being protected by the vaccine makes me feel a lot less stressed being even close to other people outdoors, even though I have not yet got any interest in sitting indoors around strangers. We buy restaurant food to go and will for a while I dare say.

The mask ordinance is a tough rule to enforce if people aren't much interested in compliance. Officers are posted up and down Duval Street gently reminding passersby of the rule to cover up but how do you get everyone everywhere to do what they don't want to do? My solution is to stay away.

I thought it was a warm afternoon but not everyone agreed apparently. I came across a study in plaid outside Wendy's at the corner of Eaton Street, properly masked to boot:

Social distancing, a term I keep hoping will disappear from our vocabularies before too long. I find it weird to imagine a future without all these precautions, so used I have become to them. I was reading in the paper today that we may be back to normal this summer and indeed my wife, also vaccinated, has bought airline tickets to California this September. It's her first vacation during the school year in 20 years as she will hit retirement this June.  September is a good month to be out of the Keys to avoid heat and hurricanes and a good month to be in Central California to avoid fog and damp.

I have been toying with making a  trip back to Europe to see my relatives one last time before we hit the road in retirement next year but Italy is having a hard time organizing vaccinations and I'm not sure how easy overseas travel will be this summer. I'm not going to have time to take extended quarantines should they be imposed.  I find it energizing that once again such plans can even be remotely considered. That feels a bit like normal.

Outdoor dining, watching the world go by from the balcony at the Whistle bar...

...riding a  motorcycle, helmetless for those that dare, Florida winter looking superficially back to normal. I took the great lumpen van back home and enjoyed the drive.